The Phoenix Transformed

by James Mallory

  “Get up,” he said to Tiercel. He grabbed his bag—the one with his Three Books—and slung it over his shoulder, and Tiercel realized that Harrier was no better dressed than Ciniran was. “Get your boots on. Get our cloaks. Get my swords.”

  “What—What—” Tiercel stammered, still fogged with sleep.

  “Something bad,” Harrier said. “Hurry.”

  Harrier ran outside again, and Tiercel realized, as he searched dazedly for his boots, that the heavy felt of the tent flap didn’t just fall neatly back into place again. It fluttered back and forth, and when it blew upward Tiercel could see that the air outside was pearly-white, foggy with choking clouds of dust raised by the wind. He stuffed his feet into his boots, and started to reach for Harrier’s swords, but then scooped up both their chadars instead. As he wrapped his around his head and tucked it, Harrier came back into the tent, gasping and coughing. Tiercel held out his chadar, but Harrier went first to the waterskins and rinsed his face and hair. He grabbed his overtunic from the pile of clothing on the floor, scrubbed himself dry, then shrugged into it before taking the chadar and picking up his swords in their harness.

  “Come on,” he said, buckling the swords into place. “Can you bring one of the saddles? Hurry.”

  Tiercel followed Harrier out of the tent, dragging a saddle and carrying an armload of clothing. He didn’t know what was going on, but surely they weren’t going to go running off half-naked?

  Shaiara and Ciniran were standing over four kneeling and bridled shotors. The shotors’ heads had been hastily wrapped in cloth, blindfolding them so that they wouldn’t move. Despite this, the animals were restless, shifting their weight and trying to rise. Two of them had already been saddled.

  The air swirled with wind and fine pale dust. After so many moonturns in the Madiran, Tiercel was used to the desert breeze that rose at sunrise and sunset, or the hot wind that blew through the entire day, but this was neither one of those things. This wind was cold and wet, and as he squinted up through the swirling dust, Tiercel saw towering black thunderheads scudding toward them from every direction, filling the heat-whiteness of the midday sky with the gray of water-fat clouds. As he watched with horrified disbelief, the light began to shift from white to greenish bronze.

  A storm. There’s going to be a hurricane—or worse. But it never rains in the desert. Everyone says so . . .

  “Hold these two!” Harrier shouted, dragging him over to the shotors and thrusting the lead-ropes for the two saddled animals into his hands. “We have to get saddles on the others. Whatever you do, don’t let them get up, or you’ll never hold them,” Harrier added grimly.

  Tiercel nodded as he dropped the bundle of cloth in his arms over the neck of the nearer beast—though he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to overpower one animal that was larger than a horse, let alone two. He looked around for the rest of their shotors and saw the animals had scattered.

  “What is it? What is it?” Ciniran demanded, and she sounded close to panic.

  “It’s a storm! It’s just a storm!” Tiercel called over the rising wind. He wanted to reassure her, but the only storms the Nalzindar knew about were the Sandwinds, and if it was going to rain in the Barahileth, that wasn’t actually reassuring.

  The others had one of the two remaining shotors saddled when there was a sudden loud boom from directly overhead, and if Harrier and Tiercel had heard a thunderclap before, Shaiara and Ciniran hadn’t, and the shotors certainly hadn’t. The two kneeling animals that Tiercel held squalled in terror, struggling to rise. They were shaking their heads to dislodge their blindfolds, and the moment they could see, they would run.

  The sky was completely black with clouds now, and the temperature had dropped so sharply that the only heat at all seemed to be coming from the ground, not the sky. The dust was gone—either blown away on the wind, or too damp to hang in the air any longer.

  “Don’t let go!” Harrier shouted uselessly. He flung himself onto the back of the just-saddled shotor and grabbed Ciniran’s wrist, hauling her up into the saddle with him even as the shotor finished lurching to a standing position and then began to run. The other, unsaddled, had already freed itself from its blindfold and fled.

  At the same instant, Shaiara sprinted across the few feet of ground that separated her from the two shotors Tiercel held. Like the others, they were shaking their heads, craning their necks as far away from him as they could, trying to shake free of the blindfolds and the lead-ropes at the same time as they got to their feet, but a shotor got to its feet haunches first, and they couldn’t do both at the same time. It was those few heartbeats delay that allowed Shaiara to reach them and set her foot against one shotor’s knee just as it organized itself to stand. She flung herself onto its back.

  “Up!” she barked, and the command was not issued to her mount, but to Tiercel.

  The second shotor was also struggling to its feet, hampered only a little by the bundle of fabric Tiercel had slung around its neck. What saved him in that moment was that Tiercel had spent a number of moonturns mounting and dismounting from something (someone) who was actually far more difficult to climb onto and off of. He grabbed the two horns of the shotor’s saddle and let its own awkward rising momentum carry him upward into the saddle.

  As soon as the shotors were on their feet, they began to run. Tiercel hadn’t realized—until he’d seen Harrier’s shotor bolt—that they could run. But the animal was as fast—faster—than a galloping horse, and it was all he could do to hold onto the saddle. Tiercel crooked his leg around the saddle-peg and tensed it against the front of the saddle and dug his other heel into the shotor’s side as hard as he could and prayed he didn’t fall off. Shaiara’s shotor was a blur in the darkness ahead, drawing farther away with every second—and Tiercel realized that it was still getting darker.

  There was another crack of thunder—this one followed by a flash of lightning—and suddenly the air was not only cold and wet, but full of water.

  Rain.

  Within seconds the wind had become a gale. It was as dark as twilight now, and the rain was coming down with hurricane force. The sky was stitched by blinding flashes of lightning, and Tiercel completely lost sight of Shaiara and her shotor. He shouted for them, but he couldn’t even hear his own voice over the sound of the storm. He was drenched and freezing—he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this cold—and the worst part was, he really couldn’t imagine that there was any good reason for this storm to have happened.

  Only bad ones.

  On his trip from Armethalieh to Sentarshadeen, he and Harrier had nearly frozen to death in the middle of the summer because Tiercel had been attacked by magic. That had been long before he understood anything about what was going on—the danger the world faced, and the part he was expected to play in averting it. At the time he’d only been horrified that so many people might have died by something he could have been responsible for. And once again that part was horrifying. But this time a part of Tiercel wanted to laugh, because once again—just as at the beginning—he was so far from being a threat to the Dark that there was nothing Tiercel could think of to do but laugh. And at the same time, a traitorous part of him wanted to hope. Because if the Dark was still spending so much energy trying to destroy him, then maybe he was still a threat after all.

  At first the ground beneath the shotor’s running feet was dry, but as it continued to rain, there was a thin slurry of rain-and-dust covering the ground, then pools of standing water, then large pools of standing water, then large pools of standing water over mudholes. The shotor fled through them all, bellowing in terror. Its running gait was even more jarring than its walking gait, and all Tiercel was able to do was hold on and hope it didn’t break a leg—or drown—because the storm didn’t let up. If anything, it kept getting worse, and every time his mount showed signs of slowing down, there was another flash of lightning, or clap of thunder, and it would run faster.

  And though at first he’d worrie
d about his shotor breaking its leg, soon Tiercel’s hands were numb with cold, and he’d bitten through his lower lip by accident, and his entire body ached both from the battering of trying to stay on the shotor’s back and the battering from the wind and rain. His chadar was molded to his face by the rain, the folds of soaking wet wool plastered to his nose and mouth. He was nearly suffocating, but he couldn’t spare a hand from his death-grip upon the saddle to claw it loose. He began to hope that the shotor would break a leg—or drown—because that would mean it would stop running.

  Tiercel wasn’t sure how long the shotor ran. He only knew that its breathing became more labored—he couldn’t hear it over the sound of the storm, but he could feel it—and that at last it slowed once more to a walk. He risked letting go of the saddle long enough to untangle the chadar enough so that he could breathe, only to clutch the wooden frame in abrupt panic when there was a sudden flash of lightning. But the shotor barely twitched in response. It actually took Tiercel a minute or two—some time after that—to realize that the beast had stopped moving entirely, and that it probably wasn’t going to move again. He tapped it on the shoulder, and the shotor settled to its knees and haunches with an echoing groan. Mud squelched under its belly.

  Now that he wasn’t trying to stay on the back of a bolting shotor, Tiercel didn’t have anything to think about except to wonder what had just happened, although “wonder” was probably too mild a word. His teeth chattered with cold. He could taste mud and blood and rain. He remembered what the desert had looked like this time yesterday. And he just couldn’t reconcile that image with . . . rain. Or with the Dark trying to kill him. Not really. The spell of Cold that had been cast on him at the inn near Sentarshadeen made sense—it would have killed him if he hadn’t woken up and set fire to the hayloft. But unless he was struck by lightning, a rainstorm wouldn’t be fatal.

  Then he thought about how deeply he’d slept today, about the sense of something unknown and unnamable being over. But Tiercel just couldn’t believe that the first thing Darkness would do upon gaining triumph over the Light at last would be to make it rain.

  Unless the Darkness means to just drown everyone, a small voice inside him said. But Tiercel found that difficult to imagine. Or maybe he just didn’t want to imagine it. Though drowned was just as dead as any other way of dying. It was as bad a way to die as burning. Or freezing. Maybe the Darkness meant to try them all one after the other. Or—

  “Stop it,” Tiercel whispered to himself. He couldn’t even hear the sound of his own voice over the wind. A high wind full of rain had a distinctive sound, like tearing paper. He couldn’t begin to count the nights he’d fallen asleep to that sound back home. It had been a year since he’d seen his home—his family, his parents, his sisters, his baby brother, anything that was familiar—and he’d been sick and in danger and scared more times than he could count. But this was the first time he’d been so homesick that all he could think of was going home.

  He knew Harrier had missed Armethalieh and his family almost from the beginning. Harrier had just been coming along because Harrier thought he couldn’t stay out of trouble by himself. And all Tiercel had wanted was to see what came next, wanted it so much that thinking about what he’d left behind was only a distant ache in his mind. Suddenly the chance to go home again was all he wanted. He couldn’t do any possible good here, so why shouldn’t he have it? Except that he couldn’t have it, because he had no way to get there, and he was going to die here without ever seeing anyone he knew and loved, and even worse . . . the Dark was going to win. And if he’d only gone home with Ancaladar a moonturn ago, Ancaladar would still be alive.

  Harrier had told him that the Dragonbond was intact, that Ancaladar was alive—somewhere. He’d said Kareta told him so, but that she didn’t know where Ancaladar was. Tiercel wanted to believe it; everything he knew about the Dragonbond said that Ancaladar had to be alive, because neither half of the Bond could survive the death of the other. But suddenly Tiercel wondered if anything Harrier had said was true. Had Harrier really Summoned Kareta at all? Or had everything he’d said been a lie? Tiercel knew that Harrier had lied about something that morning. Harrier didn’t lie well at all. Was it that?

  Had Kareta come at all?

  Or had she come and said something completely different?

  Tiercel had never been so miserable in his life. Cold, pain, exhaustion, guilt, failure . . . they were all painful and almost impossible to bear.

  Suspicion of his lifelong friend was worse.

  Awkwardly, Tiercel reached out and patted the shotor’s neck, wanting to receive comfort nearly as much as to give it. His fingers squelched into the wet fur as if he patted a water-filled sponge. The shotor moaned in misery.

  TIERCEL wasn’t sure how long the two of them sat there in the pounding rain. Long enough for him to painstakingly untangle one of the cloaks from the pile of wet fabric looped around the shotor’s neck and wrap it around himself. The garments had only remained in place during their wild flight because the rain had been so heavy that the fabric had gotten soaked through almost instantly, but even wet wool could keep you warm. He knew that because Simera had told both of them so moonturns ago, when she was teaching them how to survive in the wilderness.

  Tiercel thought back to Windy Meadows, the sight of the Goblins in the street of the deserted town. If he’d known then what he knew now—if he’d burned the creatures the moment he’d seen them—would it have made a difference? Would Simera still be alive? If Simera had lived, would Ancaladar still be alive?

  His thoughts went around in circles—Ancaladar to Simera to what he could possibly have done differently to had Harrier lied to him to how cold and wet and wretched he was and back again. He didn’t want to think about how cold it was going to get out here tonight and he wondered if their tent was still there at all and how far he was from it. He did his best not to think about the others, because he had no idea of where they were or whether or not they were all right. He was so dazed by the combination of his own misery and the endless drumming of the rain that the shotor’s sudden decision to get to its feet took him completely by surprise. Its feet skidded in the mud, and it bawled its displeasure as it lurched and swayed. Tiercel had spread the tangled mass of cloaks and robes over the shotor’s withers to sort through them. The horn and front rise of the saddle were still completely swaddled in wet fabric. He grabbed and flailed, clutching wildly, and barely managed to keep his balance. If it chose to start running again, Tiercel wasn’t sure he could stay on its back this time—not only was he exhausted, his hands and feet were numb.

  But all the shotor wanted to do was stand and wail happily at the mounted figures approaching through the rain.

  “Oh, come on, you lazy beast,” Tiercel sighed. “We’ve had a nice rest here in the . . . mud. Come on.”

  “HOW did you find me?” Tiercel asked.

  “Wildmage,” Harrier answered briefly.

  The three shotors stood huddled together, sharing what body heat they could. Ciniran was now mounted behind Shaiara, and Tiercel had distributed the salvaged garments. They were too wet to put on, so everyone had simply wrapped them around their heads and shoulders. Tiercel knew the day wasn’t cold in comparison with a winter storm in Armethalieh or even with the temperatures the desert could reach at night, but they were all soaking wet and the rain falling on them was cold. At least the storm wasn’t blowing hurricane-force winds in his face now, just raining straight down. And he thought the sky wasn’t quite as dark.

  Harrier rubbed his head as if it hurt—or he might just have been brushing the water out of his eyes. “Lightfoot here ran until she ran some sense into her fool head, then I did a Finding Spell to locate Shaiara. As soon as Lightfoot was willing to move, we went and got her, and I did another one to find you.” He rubbed his head again.

  Tiercel was no Wildmage, but he’d spent the last half year listening to Harrier complain about being one—specifically about MagePrice. And as
far as Tiercel knew, there were only three spells in a Wildmage’s inventory that didn’t carry MagePrice: Fire, Coldfire, and Scrying. While the MagePrice for Finding was (apparently) small—since Harrier had cast it twice and looked just fine—the spell carried MagePrice. And now Harrier had two of them to pay.

  “Are you all right?” Tiercel asked.

  Harrier looked at him as if he’d just lost his mind. “You can’t feel it?” he asked incredulously. Whatever he saw in Tiercel’s face made him grimace and continue, raising his voice a little to be heard over the rain. “I guess the High Magick must be good for something, then, if it means you can’t sense this at all. Because it . . . something woke me up, just before the weather started turning. It’s like something stinks. Or somebody’s scraping a nail down a chalk-slate. Or if you’ve bitten into a rotten plum. Or all of them at once.” He rubbed his face again.

  Tiercel took a deep breath to try to control the sudden pang of fear and nausea he felt. “It’s the Dark,” he said. “That’s what you’re feeling.” We’re too late. I was wrong. That is what the storm meant. We’re too late.

  “Yeah, I actually managed to work that out for myself,” Harrier answered irritably. “So. What do we do now?”

  If they’d been alone, if they’d been standing face-to-face, Tiercel would simply have hit him. He didn’t know which he was most at the moment—frightened or angry or grief-stricken—but most of all he thought: How dare he ask me to make a decision like this?

  It wasn’t fair that Harrier should be able to hide behind not being the one the Light had chosen, behind being a sort of afterthought tacked on by the Wild Magic as a safety measure. Neither of them had ever thought Harrier’s magic would be called for. They’d been idiots. Harrier Gillain—the first Knight-Mage called by the Wild Magic since the days of Kellen Tavadon—they should have taken that as the warning it was. But they’d thrown it away. Harrier hadn’t even trained properly. The moment Kareta gave him his Three Books he could have headed right back to Karahelanderialigor and gotten Elunyerin or Rilphanifel to teach him how to fight. Idalia had been Kellen’s sister. She would have known everything he needed to know about Knight-Mages. Instead, Harrier had complained for moonturns about being offered the Books at all, and now he barely knew anything about them.